Colonialism Devalues our Dreams - here’s why we need to reclaim them
This is a short version of this article on Medium
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had vivid, detailed dreams. As a child, I was always told I had an overactive imagination — when I wasn’t being a superhero in my dreamtime, I was writing stories, roleplaying with toys or creating imaginary worlds in my bedroom.
But as I got older, I found that fewer and fewer people wanted to talk about any of this stuff. Most people told me “I don’t dream” or that they barely ever remembered their dreams. I went to university and had critical thinking and science hammered into me: dreams are nothing more than the random firing of neurons, my Psychology professors professed. No mystery here: just your brain doing a defrag at night to process information.
But I still continued to dream. And as I waded through my skeptical, cynical 20s and started to come back to magic, intuition and wonder in my 30s, I started to research the world of dreaming again…
From Midjourney
Dreams have been a source of fascination and reverence in cultures throughout time, across the world. In Indigenous traditions, they are seen as sacred tools for guidance, healing, and connection. Ancient societies, such as the Greeks, viewed dreams as portals to divine wisdom, offering glimpses of truths that transcended the waking world.
But today — dreaming is usually dismissed, ignored, or even laughed at. After all, we’re told it’s just the random firing of neurons — or perhaps, at best, a way for our brains to model different potential scenarios.
Our imaginations are treated with the same lack of reverence. We have this amazing, complex and mysterious organ inside our heads that can simulate entirely different realities and universes, allowing us to sit at a bus stop while walking through an alien planet or composing a song — and yet here we are, building generative AI that can draw pictures and write stories for us, often so distracted by artificially generated busyness and stress that we never stop, pause, and remember that we have this ability at all.
Modern society prioritises productivity, being busy, accumulating money and status, and for many people, just surviving.
So is the devaluing and dismissal of our dreams a byproduct of colonialism, capitalism, and the prioritisation of productivity? Or is imagination intentionally suppressed so that we don’t start to imagine better alternatives? It’s no wonder so many people feel there’s no meaning to life, and why so many of us have felt like something is missing.
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For many Indigenous cultures, dreaming has always been central to life. Among the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), dreams are considered sacred messages that guide personal and communal decisions*. Many (perhaps all) Indigenous cultures seem to value dreaming; not only the ones you have when asleep, but any sort of vision that may come to you during “waking” time, too — daydreams, guided visualisations, or things you may see during a trance state.
Dreams were also seen as messages from the Gods in Ancient Egypt; who were so fascinated by their nighttime visions that they created dream incubation temples, where they would sleep and await dream messages. If you thought Dream Symbol dictionaries were a New Age invention, think again: the Dream Book is over 3000 years old.
It seems that most humans, throughout time, have been fascinated by dreams and seen them as important messages or as the soul travelling to another place.
In most traditions, it seems dreams are more than individual experiences; they are part of a communal and spiritual fabric. Often, they are seen as intertwined with ‘waking’ dreams we might have from altered states of consciousness; as ways of accessing the Otherworld, other dimensions, other frequencies — whatever you might want to call them. Dreams have been seen as everything from a way to connect to our ancestors to a way to see the future.
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The Colonial project was (is) not only to seize land and resources but also to dismantle Indigenous ways of knowing. Dream practices, deeply rooted in spiritual traditions, were often labeled as “superstitious” or “primitive” by colonisers seeking to impose Eurocentric systems of logic and rationality.
Kimberly L. Todd, in her essay Shedding of the Colonial Skin: The Decolonial Potentialities of Dreaming, notes that colonialism severed Indigenous peoples from their traditions, including their dreamwork, as part of a broader effort to destroy their cultural and spiritual foundations - go and read it!
Modern life really is soul-crushing, and this isn’t just a figure of speech that we use to describe boredom and monotony. The very concept that we have a soul, that there is something beyond the tangible and material… whether we’re talking about being able to transcend time and connect with ancestors, connect with each other across distances, connect with the earth (which most people have believed to have a soul or anima mundi)… has become something that is dismissed, laughed at, or treated as a sign of lower intelligence.
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Even if you don’t buy into magical theories of dreams, they can still be powerful ways for us to reframe situations in our lives and gain new perspective. Freud called them the “royal road to the unconscious”, although he mostly thought every dream was a phallic symbol or some repressed incestuous desire.
Dreams can be very useful tools: experienced lucid dreamers are able to practice giving speeches, taking their driving test or memorising dance routines; I’ve personally been able to practice languages I’m learning and even run through facilitating workshops in dreams!
But modern capitalism tells us that productivity and material gain are far more important than introspection and imagination. Sleep itself has become a casualty of capitalism: with the rise of late-night work culture, constant connectivity, and overstimulation from technology, restful sleep — let alone dreaming — is often sacrificed.
To sleep, perchance to dream? Forget it: the fast pace of modern life leaves little room for reflection when we wake up — I don’t have time to sit around and write down my dreams, I have to get ready for work! — and cultural narratives encourage people to view dreams as random or meaningless.
The subtle but pervasive message is clear: dreams are unproductive, and therefore, unimportant.
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What does a population that can’t imagine look like? When we’re told that the way things are now are the only way they have ever been, or could ever be. We live in a system where a handful of billionaires have the power to turn off the world’s power and food supply, where rights that were painfully fought for over decades are being swept away with the stroke of a pen, and where we’ve brought our biosphere to near-collapse and we’re told this is the best humanity can come up with.
Joanna Macy speaks of the power of moral imagination, a crucial component of the Work that Reconnects that invites us to speak as ancestors, as non-human beings, or as future human beings. Through this practice we start to dream alternative ways of being and seeing that the future is not set in stone.
We need to remember how to imagine, otherwise we are doomed to accept the reality presented to us. Positive climate fiction, such as solarpunk, can show us how the power of imagination can help us create better futures.
Jimmy Pike — Rainbow Serpent Dreamtime Story (https://japingkaaboriginalart.com/articles/rainbow-serpent/)
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So if you’re keen to reclaim your ability to dream, what can you do? If you struggle to recall “night dreams”, remember that many ancient cultures and modern dreamwork practitioners consider “waking dreams” to be equally potent: for example, what you might experience in a drumming circle, guided visualisation, or through meditation.
Here are a few ways to get started:
Dream Journaling: Upon waking, take a few moments to write down any dreams you remember. This practice helps you reconnect with your subconscious and notice patterns or symbols over time. You may find a voice recorder more effective if you don’t want to turn on a light.
Dream Sharing: Create spaces to share dreams with trusted friends or within a community. Sharing dreams can deepen their meaning and foster connection. I have an active WhatsApp Dreaming group going on — get in touch if you want to join!
Dream Incubation: Before sleep, set an intention to dream about a specific question or theme. This practice, used in many ancient cultures, invites the subconscious to engage with waking concerns.
Reconnect with Ancestral Wisdom: Learn about how your own ancestors or cultural heritage viewed dreams. Engaging with these traditions can offer a sense of belonging and continuity.
Create Rituals: Incorporate rituals before bed to honour the dreamworld, such as meditating, placing objects of personal significance nearby, or saying a small prayer — this is to get your mind into ‘dreaming mode’ before you fall asleep.
I’m not going to touch on actually analysing the dreams just yet — the first step is just to get that imagination muscle working. Even if you only remember an echo of an image or feeling at first, you’re one step closer.
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Dreams can help us tap into ancestral memory, reconnect with the Earth, and remember that we are part of a wider, magical web of life full of mystery and imagery. They remind us that another way is possible, reconnecting us to our inner landscapes and to the greater web of life, offering a vision of a world rooted in connection, creativity, and care. In a culture that seeks to suppress dreaming, reclaiming it is an act of resistance, healing, and hope.
I’m finally heeding the call to explore not only my own dreams more deeply, but to set up spaces to discuss and share dreams together with others. If you want to explore more, my absolute favourite person in this realm is Toko-Pa Turner: https://toko-pa.com/ — her book The Dreaming Way is gorgeous!
“Consider for a moment how deeply invested we are in what we call Reality. Rationalism is the pervasive myth of our time, occupying the lion’s share of our thoughts & motivations. So focused are we on navigating the literal, material world, that we’ve atrophied our relationship with the symbolic life.
When we wake up from a dream, it appears as a jumble of nonsense, so we set about forgetting it. The more we forget our dreams, the more they forget us.You see, forgetting is a passive choice. We choose unconsciousness because, somewhere deep in our bones, we know that Remembering is not only an act of rebellion that will carry us far out onto the fringes of consensus reality, but a choice that also carries a great responsibility.” Toko-Pa Turner
Do you want to join my dreamers WhatsApp group (it’s free!), or incorporate dreamwork into our coaching together? Get in touch with me if so!
From Midjourney
